If you knew or served with this Airman and have additional information or photos to support this Page, please leave a message for the Page Administrator(s) HERE.
Contact Info
Home Town Birmingham, Alabama
Last Address Birmingham, Alabama
Date of Passing Aug 28, 1993
Location of Interment Elmwood Cemetery - Birmingham, Alabama
He was born in Saint Winifreds Freehold, Saint Mary's County, MD but lived most of his life in Birmingham, AL.
He was a 3 rank and 2 aircraft ace. He shot down 1 enemy aircraft July 3, 1943 as a 2nd Lt., and 2 more Jan 23, 1944 as a 1st Lt., all flying a P-40. He became an ace by shooting down 3 more on Nov 1, 1944 as a Capt.; but his P-38 was shot down by antiaircraft fire from a Japanese destroyer. He was rescued and returned to his unit on November 14.
His DSC citation: Awarded for actions during World War II
The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 9, 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross to Captain (Air Corps) Elliott Estill Dent, Jr. (ASN: 0-794924), United States Army Air Forces, for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an armed enemy while serving as Pilot of a P-38 Fighter Airplane in the 7th Fighter Squadron, 49th Fighter Group, FIFTH Air Force, in aerial combat against enemy forces on 1 November 1944, over Leyte, Philippine Islands. While on patrol, Captain Dent led his flight of four P-38 aircraft in an attack upon fifteen to twenty enemy fighters protecting a large Japanese convoy. As he was closing in on one of the enemy fighters, four others came out of the clouds and, though he had become separated from the rest of his flight and was alone, he immediately made a head-on pass at them. For fifteen to twenty minutes he battled them fiercely, firing short bursts at each fighter in turn. By skillful maneuvering he escaped their determined attacks and sent two of them crashing into the sea and a third into a mangrove swamp. He was pursuing the fourth enemy fighter when anti-aircraft fire from a Japanese destroyer shot out the right engine of his airplane and, with smoke billowing into the cockpit, he was forced to parachute into the water. Though he was in sight of Japanese ships, he managed to escape detection and was rescued that night. Captain Dent displayed outstanding gallantry, skill, and devotion to duty in pressing a lone attack against an enemy force so numerically superior. His unquestionable valor in aerial combat is in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflects great credit upon himself, the 5th Air Force, and the United States Army Air Forces.
General Orders: Headquarters, U.S. Forces-Pacific, General Orders No. 49 (July 14, 1945)
World War II killed more people, involved more nations, and cost more money than any other war in history. Altogether, 70 million people served in the armed forces during the war, and 17 million combatants died. Civilian deaths were ever greater. At least 19 million Soviet civilians, 10 million Chinese, and 6 million European Jews lost their lives during the war.
World War II was truly a global war. Some 70 nations took part in the conflict, and fighting took place on the continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe, as well as on the high seas. Entire societies participated as soldiers or as war workers, while others were persecuted as victims of occupation and mass murder.
World War II cost the United States a million causalities and nearly 400,000 deaths. In both domestic and foreign affairs, its consequences were far-reaching. It ended the Depression, brought millions of married women into the workforce, initiated sweeping changes in the lives of the nation's minority groups, and dramatically expanded government's presence in American life.
The War at Home & Abroad
On September 1, 1939, World War II started when Germany invaded Poland. By November 1942, the Axis powers controlled territory from Norway to North Africa and from France to the Soviet Union. After defeating the Axis in North Africa in May 1941, the United States and its Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943 and forced Italy to surrender in September. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the Allies landed in Northern France. In December, a German counteroffensive (the Battle of the Bulge) failed. Germany surrendered in May 1945.
The United States entered the war following a surprise attack by Japan on the U.S. Pacific fleet in Hawaii. The United States and its Allies halted Japanese expansion at the Battle of Midway in June 1942 and in other campaigns in the South Pacific. From 1943 to August 1945, the Allies hopped from island to island across the Central Pacific and also battled the Japanese in China, Burma, and India. Japan agreed to surrender on August 14, 1945 after the United States dropped the first atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Consequences:
1. The war ended Depression unemployment and dramatically expanded government's presence in American life. It led the federal government to create a War Production Board to oversee conversion to a wartime economy and the Office of Price Administration to set prices on many items and to supervise a rationing system.
2. During the war, African Americans, women, and Mexican Americans founded new opportunities in industry. But Japanese Americans living on the Pacific coast were relocated from their homes and placed in internment camps.
The Dawn of the Atomic Age
In 1939, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt, warning him that the Nazis might be able to build an atomic bomb. On December 2, 1942, Enrico Fermi, an Italian refugee, produced the first self-sustained, controlled nuclear chain reaction in Chicago.
To ensure that the United States developed a bomb before Nazi Germany did, the federal government started the secret $2 billion Manhattan Project. On July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert near Alamogordo, the Manhattan Project's scientists exploded the first atomic bomb.
It was during the Potsdam negotiations that President Harry Truman learned that American scientists had tested the first atomic bomb. On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress, released an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan. Between 80,000 and 140,000 people were killed or fatally wounded. Three days later, a second bomb fell on Nagasaki. About 35,000 people were killed. The following day Japan sued for peace.
President Truman's defenders argued that the bombs ended the war quickly, avoiding the necessity of a costly invasion and the probable loss of tens of thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives. His critics argued that the war might have ended even without the atomic bombings. They maintained that the Japanese economy would have been strangled by a continued naval blockade, and that Japan could have been forced to surrender by conventional firebombing or by a demonstration of the atomic bomb's power.
The unleashing of nuclear power during World War II generated hope of a cheap and abundant source of energy, but it also produced anxiety among large numbers of people in the United States and around the world.